A quick read. I picked this up after I finally got around to seeing "The Social Network" because I wanted to see if the book offered more information (it turns out that the movie is actually pretty faithful to the spirit of the book). "Facebook's Founding According to Eduardo Saverin" would probably be the most accurate (if not particularly catchy) title for both book and movie. Although Mark Zuckerberg's lack of cooperation with the project makes any account of his personal recollections conjecture, his silence certainly didn't impede the narrative. It's actually quite amazing how much material was obviously accessible, not just from interviews with Harvard classmates, but from court documents and sources like The Harvard Crimson. I wasn't terribly impressed with the book itself; it's poorly written, rather juvenile and frequently quite obnoxious in tone. ( )

If you have seen the movie, The Social Network, you already know the plot. Filled with the purported conversations of college students from years ago, one must remain somewhat skeptical. However, I get really nervous when the author describes taking a flight from New York to San Francisco on a 757 “wide-body.” (It’s a narrow-body.)

Mezrich, himself, says several of the characters are composites (more red flags,) and some reviewers have complained the book was too long and boring. I listened to it as an audiobook while mowing the lawn, so my expectations in that regard aren’t terribly high, and I did enjoy - or at least found interesting - the legal stuff, i.e. really rich students suing other really rich students while sucking at daddy’s teat.

One does wonder what Zuckerberg might have accomplished had he been studying philosophy instead of computer science. The social outcast as future billionaire. Mostly the characters come across as very unhappy people.

Amusing, but take with a block of salt. The author himself has noted elsewhere that he was making do with limited sources, but that the point of the book was not to be history but rather a commentary on the values of current culture. I understand [b:Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions|514313|Bringing Down the House The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions|Ben Mezrich|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175443045s/514313.jpg|502278] is a better representation of what the author can do. ( )

There’s a fascinating book in Facebook’s origins, no doubt—one that explores the near-instantaneous transformation of undergraduates to captains of industry and helps us understand why the world was ready for the kind of social networking Facebook was designed to facilitate. But Mezrich doesn’t want to write it. He wants to start every chapter with an overbaked recreation and spice up the saga of stock options with metaphors right out of Creative Writing 101.

[W]hile Mr Mezrich spins a colourful tale... his take on the internal battles at Facebook is flawed. Mr Zuckerberg refused to be interviewed for the book, so the narrative is missing a crucial perspective. And Mr Mezrich appears to have relied heavily on sources with large axes to grind against Facebook’s boss.

Has Mr. Mezrich done anything wrong in grossly embellishing, exaggerating and tarting up his material as if he were writing a screenplay? Should the tactics of a script or roman à clef be used for a purportedly nonfiction chronicle?

Kevin Spacey’s films include Superman Returns, Beyond the Sea, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, Swimming with Sharks, Seven, L.A. Confidential, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Negotiator, Hurlyburly, K-Pax, and The Shipping News. He will next be seen in Men Who Stare at Goats opposite George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, and Jeff Bridges, as well as Nick Moran’s film Telstar opposite Colm O’Neil and Pam Ferris. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Accidental Billionaires:

I first met Ben Mezrich when I produced and starred in 21, the film adaptation of his great bestseller Bringing Down the House. Ben has a gift for finding high-energy, strange-but-true tales and The Accidental Billionaires is no exception.

You may think you know the story of the Facebook phenomenon, but you haven’t heard the whole story and never like this. Recreating the unbelievable rise of the world's biggest social network—not to mention the planet's youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg—Ben tells a captivating story of betrayal, vast amounts of cash, and two friends who revolutionized the way humans connect to one another—only to have an enormous falling out and never speak again.

Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were two geeky, socially awkward Harvard undergrads who wanted nothing more than to be cool. While Eduardo chose the more straightforward path of trying to gain acceptance into one of the school's ultra-posh, semi-secret Final Clubs, Mark used his computer skills by hacking into Harvard's computers, pulling up all the pictures of every girl on campus to create a sort of "hot-or-not" site exclusive to Harvard. Though the prank nearly got Mark kicked out of college, he and Eduardo realized that they were on to something big. Thus, the initial concept of Facebook was born; what happened next, however, was right out of a Hollywood thriller.

The Accidental Billionaires is the perfect pairing of author and subject. It's pure summer fun—a juicy, fast-paced, unputdownable Mezrich tale that adds to his canon of lad lit. And Hollywood has come calling again: I'm currently working with Dana Brunetti, Scott Rudin, Mike Deluca, and Aaron Sorkin on the movie adaptation of The Accidental Billionaires. If the book is any indication, the film is going to be a must see.—Kevin Spacey

Relates the story behind the founding of Facebook by Harvard University undergraduates, and describes how conflicting ideas for the future of the site destroyed the friendship of co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin.